No Land Grab

AP, via amNY
By Verena Dobnik

After years of battling the city, a group of New Yorkers has saved an old Brooklyn house they believe once sheltered slaves fleeing Southern plantations.

The city has pledged it will not seize the property, which was to be demolished to make room for an underground parking garage.

The brick townhouse was one of seven old homes slated for demolition as part of the redevelopment of downtown Brooklyn, a commercial and civic center that today bears few traces of the residential neighborhood that stood before the Civil War.

The fate of the other homes is still unclear, but activists had a rare victory to celebrate in a larger conflict that has pitted the developers transforming Brooklyn against citizens trying to prevent the "Manhattanification" of the borough.

"So many of us in the community did not want to see the Underground Railroad become an underground parking lot," said Randy Leigh, an area resident.